In a high-stakes courtroom session thick with political tension and racial reckoning, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the storm surrounding Louisiana’s newly redrawn congressional map—a map that has doubled the number of Black-majority districts and drawn fire from a group of non-Black voters.
The state’s revised map—crafted by a Republican-led legislature—upped the count of Black-majority House districts from one to two, prompting accusations that race played too heavy a hand in its design. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, yet until recently, that demographic had only a single district in which it could reliably influence congressional outcomes.
At the heart of the legal clash is the murky line between protecting minority voting rights and adhering to the Constitution’s equal protection clause—a line the Court seemed unsure where to draw.
The state’s defense was blunt: yes, politics played a role, but race didn’t dominate. Their goal, they argued, wasn’t racial gerrymandering—it was preserving the seats of high-ranking Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
“In an election year, with top congressional leaders on the line, we drew a map to protect them,” Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga told the bench. “It was a political decision, not a racial one.”
But the justices weren’t all convinced.
Chief Justice John Roberts raised eyebrows—along with some pointed geography. He noted the new second Black-majority district snakes across the state in a way that seems far from accidental. “It runs from one side of the state angling up to the other, picking up Black populations as it goes,” Roberts observed, questioning whether the oddly shaped district could truly be explained by anything other than race.
Justice Neil Gorsuch zeroed in on the language of intent. When the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Stuart Naifeh said race was “one consideration,” Gorsuch shot back: “Isn’t that another way of saying race predominated?” His underlying question: How does one square racial considerations with the 14th Amendment’s vow that race should play no role in the law?
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor pushed in the opposite direction, challenging the notion that race was the singular driver. “If politics and race coexist 50/50, that doesn’t mean race predominates, correct?” she asked, highlighting the gray areas in redistricting motivations.
All this legal sparring stems from a 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, who found that Louisiana’s prior map—featuring just one Black-majority district—likely violated the Voting Rights Act. When the legislature responded with a revised map, a dozen non-Black residents sued, alleging the remedy overcompensated and turned race into the central tool of redistricting.
In April 2024, a divided three-judge panel blocked the new map, siding with the plaintiffs who claimed the legislature leaned too heavily on racial data, thereby crossing the constitutional line.
The Court now faces the challenge of threading a very tight needle: affirming the right to fair representation for Black voters while making sure race doesn’t overshadow all other factors in mapmaking. A ruling is expected by June, just in time to reverberate across a pivotal election season.
And in a case where district lines resemble serpents and political power slithers through every argument, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
